Page 57 of Dear Future Husband (The Dearly Written #1)
Maybelle
We’d only been speeding on the spacious, dark roads for a few minutes when Richard’s hand reached over the middle console and gripped my knee. “Take the freeway.”
I pressed down on the gas pedal.
His grip tightened. “Go faster.”
The acceleration jolted us forward.
“Damn it,” he bellowed, and I flinched. “Where are you going? You were supposed to go right!”
“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I got lost.”
It was easy to fall back into that small place. To obey and keep quiet. Especially now, as I sped past rows of streetlights that exuded a pale glow in the night.
I knew what had to be done. Richard wasn’t too drunk to know I was going the wrong way. I was supposed to take a right. Instead, I continued straight. As his hold on my leg screwed up into my skin, I yelped from the pain he tore from me.
“You never could do anything right.”
The tears were no longer droplets dripping down my face, but a steady, defeated stream. Then his hand was in my hair.
“Useless,” he gritted out .
I didn’t listen to his vicious ramblings. I was too focused on the plan I decided on back in the parking lot.
My heart was racing, my limbs were trembling. I was so close. Almost there, just a couple more miles. Only a few more minutes until I reached our final destination.
There was a bridge I noted on mine and Penny’s drive to the store. A bridge with easily broken guard rails by the looks of already caused damage, and a steep fall to dark waters.
The finish line was so close. I was so close to putting an end to the pain, to the fear, to the hellish monster that tortured me and my family for far too long.
I rolled the car to a stop at a red light and as we halted, Richard’s fingers tangled into my hair, shaking my head by the roots.
Mentally, I ran away.
I retreated to a safe place in my subconscious, imagining I was in the safest place I found in my short, painful life. But it wasn’t the beach I opened my mind’s eye to.
I was with Trey. He was the one sitting next to me in the car, not Richard. I wasn’t in pain as my imaginary Trey used his thumb to delicately stroke the tears from my face.
“I’m here, May,” he whispered, and he was.
Trey Turner was by my side, always waiting and remaining with me, even in my last moments.
A pressure pushed into my side. I looked down to see the purse I still had strapped to my body, but a shape from inside was peeking out the top.
The corner of a black leather cover poked my stomach.
I didn’t know how it got in there, but I held to the strap of the bag tighter as I blinked my eyes back up to Trey’s.
“It’s yours,” I shoved out over my heart-wrenching sobs because if I had the chance to tell him one last thing, it would be this. “The journal. It’s yours. It’s always been yours. ”
His smile was kind. It was beautiful as his green eyes watched me. “I know.”
Then my head cracked into the window.
“You ruined everything!” Richard screamed as he pulled my face from the glass, then shoved me back. “I lost everything because of you!”
I tensed, ready for the next blow, but soft hands caught my face instead. “Shh, Lovebug. I’m here. I’ve got you.”
I squinted to see my conjured-up imagination of Trey was gone. Sitting in his place was—my mom, holding me to her. She felt so real, warm. The same as she had the night I lost her.
My head hit the glass again.
When Mom pulled away, her big, sea foam eyes watched me before she kissed my throbbing head.
“I’m so proud,” she whispered. “ We are so, so proud of you.”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant by we. I had a feeling I knew, and my heart caved in on itself. What a reunion that must’ve been. My mom finally running home to the love of her life.
I too would have that reunion soon.
She kissed my head again before she made me look her in the eyes. “Live, Maybelle. Take the leap and live.”
“What?” I asked, hiccupping.
“Take the leap,” she repeated before pulling me to her chest one last time. “You are Maybelle Mason, and you can do hard things.”
I blinked. Hot liquid melted down my face. My vision was hazy, but despite that, when I blinked again, I saw my brother sitting in the seat next to me, clear as day.
“Fight, May.”
My head and heart seemed to fissure as I made myself look at my twin brother.
“Fight. You have to fight,” he repeated, and I felt shattered, hopelessly broken .
“I don’t know how,” I sobbed.
Liam’s firm hands grabbed my shoulders and his misty blue eyes bored into me. “Yes, you do.”
Hold still, keep quiet, obey.
It was the anthem my body sang to, now, and for all my life. For as long as Richard had a part in my fate, my body held still, it kept quiet, and it obeyed.
“I know,” Liam said, reading my thoughts.
And he did. My brother understood this part of me. He shared in this heartache with me.
Except once.
My muddled brain was tired. It was lost, but the images, the feelings and the memories of that one night came crawling back.
That night he fought. That night my brother fought for me… because he saw me as something worth fighting for.
The world froze around me as I found myself back in the car with Richard. His hand was still in my hair, his breathing heavy on my face and my vision blurred him out of focus.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, mixing with the iron taste of blood spilling over my lips as I looked him in his dark eyes.
The same eyes that looked at me, a child, and deemed me unworthy of human decency.
The eyes that made me feel that I was not worth fighting for.
That I was no more than a rug to tread on, an object to hit down over and over again.
I hadn’t planned to survive this.
When I entered this vehicle, I accepted that I wouldn’t get to tell Trey I was sorry for leaving our life together so early. That I wouldn’t get the opportunity to thank him for loving me. For standing beside me through every phase of my life, even when he’d only been a book of empty pages.
Without realizing it, I chose to run. To escape. To take the empty path on the beach leaning right. But if I learned anything from these last months, absent of the scars on my memory. From my book, from Trey, it’s that I too was worth fighting for.
I was not alone. And I wanted to live.
I screamed. I screamed with the volume and force of a thousand locked up cries for help that were finally let loose as I made my body move. I shoved Richard off of me. I lurched for the car door and threw it open.
I didn’t make it far, though. His hands were quick as they laced themselves around my throat from behind and dragged me back.
“It’s all your fault! You never could do anything right! Pathetic! You were always in the goddamned way. Worthless piece of—good for nothing—!”
He continued to seethe. More insults and vicious words pouring from him as his hands grew tighter. With my foot off the brakes, the car rolled forward into the empty intersection. My foot skidded along the asphalt as my body hung halfway out the open car door.
My vision and breaths were failing me, but I kicked, I thrashed, I scratched, and I bucked. I didn’t stop. I continued to swing. I continued to fight. While my body shook from the loss of strength for the fight it finally won against itself, I thought of Liam.
“ I’m broken too ,” I had admitted to him on that beach all those long months ago. “ Maybe, from now on, we can try to talk more. Fix the broken pieces together ?”
In my mind’s eye, Liam wasn’t drunk as he swayed back and forth, nodding his agreement. He was standing tall with a brilliant smile on his vibrant face. Eyes bright and awake, he reached his hand out to me.
“ I’d like that .”
I didn’t see the semi-truck or its bright headlights. But I heard its blaring horn and its screeching brakes as it barreled into the passenger side of the vehicle.
I didn’t see what happened to Richard as the whole world capsized. I didn’t think as his hands fell from my neck, but I did what I’d been told.
I leapt.
I hadn’t gotten much time to mourn my family’s memory after remembering, but as my world turned white and I put my hand in Liam’s… I didn’t think I would be needing the time.
We had all the time in the world.